Britain calls for rapid action on climate change
The UK’s Financial Times, along with pretty much every other newspaper of note in the world, is reporting on the Stern Report, saying Britain calls for rapid action on climate change.
The report by Sir Nicholas Stern, former World Bank chief economist and a senior UK civil servant, said establishing a carbon price, through tax, trading or regulation, was “an essential foundation” for tackling global warming.
Sir Nicholas said that achieving deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions would cost about 1 per cent of world economic output by 2050, a level that was “significant but manageable”.
Tony Blair, UK prime minister, and Gordon Brown, chancellor, endorsed the report’s central recommendation for the development of an international market in carbon trading to slash emissions of harmful greenhouse gases. Mr Brown will throw his weight behind a massive expansion of carbon trading rather than raising billions of pounds in green taxes.
In his 700-page review, Sir Nicholas also said policies were required to support a range of low carbon and energy efficient technologies.
He suggested there could be high returns from doubling investment in these areas to $20bn a year.
“There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change if strong collective action starts now,” he said. “With the right incentives, the private sector will respond and can deliver solutions.”
Efforts to move the world onto a low carbon path would need to go hand in hand with measures to adapt to the effects of climate change.
Mr Blair told reporters in London that the report was the “most important” he had received.
I’m at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival this week and the talk is all about climate change. This report has come out at an incredibly opportune time and I look forward to spending the evening digesting the main points. It’s headline news all over the world right now so I won’t go into much more detail here and now. Why not download the full report and read it for yourself. — DS
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